Senior Ad Pages for High School Yearbook 2012

Busy with Senior Ads. It's that time of year!

I wanted to share one that I finished this morning. It is for a young man that is very interested in car racing. He has it all. Brains, brawn, and the backing of incredibly supportive grounded parents.

The first photo is the final art. I was given many photos to use, however I wanted to incorporate them in an interesting way. We did a photo shoot down at the pier and I choose this background because it gave me space to add things around. I liked the glasses on him. It is who he is. Doesn't he look comfortable? It's not very often that I shoot pics of boys that have the comfort zone that he did. (His mom taught him well!) or was it dad?...

I took some of the pics and added borders of white to them to make them look as if they were mounted on mat board. The in Layer Style, I added drop shadows and bevelled edges on some. Next I changed the perspective. In Edit/Transform; Distort gave me the effect I was looking for. I wanted them to look like they were on firm poster board, either leaning up to the pillar, or laying on the sand and hit by a few waves. Changing the Layers to either multiply, soft light, overlay, or even color burn gave me options on how it would look as if it had been in water. The signature text was placed and tweaked with the warped text tool, and adjusted to look like someone had just come along and put graffiti on the pillars. The only text that was left in normal text type was the quote that the mom wanted. I felt it needed to look like it was added on to the photo, not in the staging of the photo. 

I realized it was just right when my teenage son who NEveR says anything about my art, came in and said "That's really cool." All was good.

So-- we went from here--

 To here!

Thanks for stopping by my blog. Let me know what you think!

Schurr High / Photo Booth 2011

A few weeks back I did a photo shoot for the Schurr High School's 20th Class Reunion in Montebello. They wanted a photo booth without the cost. So, I worked a bit of magic. I used a simplified vignette that we use for Inside Out Weddings/Events. I had my backdrop, jerry-rigged it up behind the bench and brought in the props.

There are two sites that I think you ought to know about. The first one is the PhotoFunia's site. Here is the link: http://photofunia.com/. There you can do many many things with your photos. I went to miscellaneous effects and clicked onto "booth strips". Here is an example of one photo along with the strip that it turned in to. You have the option to print (yeah!) in color, sepia, or black and white. Being a 20th class reunion, I am showing you the sepia toned ones. I think they are amazingly real.

Next, I wanted to have more fun so I made them into Polaroids. By using http://www.poladroid.net/, you can download your own handy dandy tool and plop all your pics in it. Voila! Instant, or almost instant, Polaroids - sometimes you have to shake the photos to get them to turn faster... You remember the drill.

Remember when doing a photo booth, encourage silly. I know it's tough to be silly in our old age, (myself not included-- I am silly all the time). But it sure makes for great photos when there is a spark of life in the rgb's or the cmyk's.





PS: These spartans don't even look as if they've hit the 20 year mark!! 

I put them in photoshop and added some actions and type to complete the project.

 Love Love Love!

Beach Buddies

This week I was asked to submit a few pics of ocean scenes to my sister's client's pediatric office. You can view her office here; InsideOut Designs. They are looking for something teal that can be enlarged for a wall in their waiting room. I submitted several options and then decided at the last minute to send this one too. Being a pediatric office, I liked that it was with children.

The next photo is the original. It was scanned from a 35 mm print taken back in 2001. You can see how much junk got painted out. There were so many distractions in the background. One of the huge benefits in photoshop.

Then I came across this 2003 print. I love how happy she is on the back of her buddy.

Happy Photo Shopping and happy photoshopping!

Baby Shower Decorations for Days!!

What is today, Wednesday? Already?? I feel as if my week has been tucked away somewhere under the dust layers in this house. Monday and Tuesday took me to Mag's college for orientation. As ready as I know she is, her own trust in herself is only emerging as she's willing to take risks. Standing there next to her and the numerous other freshman (with no moms) she says to me I can leave. I asked if she was embarrassed that I was there and she said no, she wanted me there. She was sad that she was such a baby and needed her mom. I smiled, gave her a hug and said that she'd always be MY baby. Then left to sit on the other side of the campus until I got the text "OK, now you can go." Gut wrenching. 

On the drive home she called and said she had met two very nice girls. They included her in (Thank you Lord) and all was good in the 909.

Sunday was my niece's baby shower. I won't even get into how crazy I work. Makes no sense to anyone unless you're related or creative. Luckily my sisters are both! lol

My sister walked in with these beautiful flowers from Devynn's Gardens in Seal Beach.

A must have for every party!

Devynn's Garden in Sunset Beach

AND she walked in with all this food and this adorable bowl as a gift for me!!  

 Scrumptious Chicken Salad Sandwiches, Chinese noodle salad and fruit for days!

My kids made the desserts the night before.

We had purchased several lanterns. After opening them up we realized that they ones from Alin Party (L.B.) were the best. The Martha Stewart lacy ones were good too, however MS's ones that opened up into balls (see ones in pic below) were not so good. Touch or breathe on them wrong and they'd dent. Wouldn't recommend them.

Played games... eggs were to decorate like a baby. And then you had to take care of it all day.

Lastly, I attempted to make table linens even though the bobbins for my daughter's sewing machine were missing. (And the ones I bought to replace didn't work)...

It was a great party and I'm sad to have to put my house back. However, now I can make the linens the way they should be. I'd really like to sell them on etsy. 

Life is moving so fast and I wished that I had time to do more, to finish, to enjoy, to take a step back and say, whew. But on to the next things on my list.

Thank you Sherri for all your work & patience in this. It was a joint venture and quite a venture - adventure! Thank you Debbie, for without the initial invitation created with your art, we wouldn't have had the inspiration and motivation to move in this direction. Last-- thank you Manny and Hayley. For without your sweet Adeline, we would have had a party of none.

Ewe... Grass.

Tomorrow's weather forecast is bringing a shower... baby that is. My niece is expecting her first baby and it's a girl! I made up these sheets for people to fill out for her (thanks to ideas on the web of course and my all too talented artist sister who gave me the floral-print-art) I emailed her a copy of it and she then sent me back another idea. Which I have to say is so much better! My niece loves lambs and we used my sis's sheep on the invitation....

Here is my sis's version! lol Blah Blah.... Don't you love it?

Being that I had printed mine already, I took her creation and tweaked it into a thank you card that my niece can use. Her husband's family is Spanish speaking so I made a bilingual version of my "thank ewe" card. Here is put it on top of her floral print. Thank ewe and Grass see us. 

The back of the card has lines for her to write on and their names were printed on the bottom,

but I took it off for this posting.

I changed the colors;

And then went crazy.

 Grass see us pour looking at my blog. Here's looking at ewe.

Wedding in Temecula - Photoshop Techniques

Shooting a wedding brings many surprises. For me, they are standard yet workable issues. I love to see what I can do with photos in photo shop. Here is my chosen fix for the day. In the first photo you can see what the wedding coordinator got to do. She escorted these two frilly tots down a long stretch and then helped them down stairs. (Earlier that day one of them had shoes on, and the other, just a band aid on her big toe. I'm glad they went barefoot. So cute.)

Sadly, the wedding coordinator didn't make the cut. Or did make the cut... and the youngest did too since she was in a tree-- more or less. So I took out the coordinator holding the sister, and removed the arm that was holding her hand. I created another arm and made it as if she was all on her own. I'm sure her mother will be proud that she is able to walk all the way down those steps by herself. lol

But then it began to really bug me that she looked as if she only had one foot. So, back to photo shop she did go. Adding another foot.

In this one, I added "actions". I used a patina texture and vignette. I wanted her to keep her pristine white dress so I erased any texture that was overlaid on her.

And last, the very first photo on this post shows her up against a fence which has graffiti on it. The fence is actually the steps that she is walking down, just rotated 90 degrees. And the graffiti words and wings were placed as overlays to give the illusion that they are written on the boards.

What have you done in photo shop lately?

Flower Girl

Love this little girl. I'll post her and her sister tomorrow.

Temecula is all about green this time of year. Incredible background.

Temecula Wedding Preview

Here are just a few photos from the Temecula wedding on Saturday. I will post more as I go through them. I like these for different reasons. Which ones do you like and why?

Temecula has some amazing photographic locations. I'm sad that my time was very limited with the bride and groom. I may drive out there again just to play.

Wedding @ Temecula Winery

This weekend gave me the opportunity to shoot a wedding at a Temecula winery. Here is one quick one, straight out of the camera. Just wanted to get something on the blog. I'm posting this one for Communal Global blog. One that shows pics from around the world. Visit it here: http://communalglobal.blogspot.com/

Can't go wrong with an adorable child. She was a delight!